Peter Jackson Left Out a Few Things
by Frodo'sPen
Summary: Sequel to "Peter Jackson Has Ruined Everything." After accidentally stumbling on a door to Middle Earth, Raelyn and Geoffrey find themselves caught up in the War of the Ring and learn what happened to their long lost Aunt Scilla.
1. Where'd You Go, Aunt Pris?

**AN:** I've had a weird summer. Consequently, I'm updating and changing some things before plunging ahead. I apologize if this throws those of you who have been reading from the beginning. Think of it as being involved in the writing process from the beginning. The most obvious change is the main character's name. I had a hard time taking "Rose" seriously in my own head, and the writing suffered as a result. The story strayed from what I intended.

But it's nearly autumn now, and I have an easier time settling down to projects as the weather grows colder. The story that follows will, I hope, do justice to the love I feel for _The Lord of the Rings_.

 **Summary:** Sequel to "Peter Jackson Has Ruined Everything." After accidentally stumbling on a door to Middle Earth, Raelyn and Geoffrey find themselves caught up in the War of the Ring and learn what happened to their long lost Aunt Scilla.

 **Rating:** T

 **Disclaimer:** As stated previously in "Peter Jackson Has Ruined Everything," I do not actually have any fundamental problems with Jackson's films. That said, I thought I'd get into a little of what was left out. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I am enjoying writing it.

I do not own Peter Jackson or any of the LOTR characters and am not making any money off of this.

 **Dedication:** To **suzii3499** , who requested a sequel, and **bleeding-roses-16** , who prompted the unusual romance this story contains.

"I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil."

J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter 1: Where'd You Go, Aunt Pris?

There's a picture on my parent's mantel of me being held by a woman I don't remember meeting.

Once, when I was thirteen and in a particularly difficult mood, I asked my mom to take it down. The request turned into an argument, which turned into a fight, because my mom was abrasive at the best of times, but she was especially touchy about Aunt Priscilla.

"Where is she?" I remember asking the first time I was old enough to wonder, and then the hurt-angry-dying look on my mother's face as she answered that she didn't know.

The woman in the picture was younger than my mother, taller, leaner, and she looked strong, but couldn't have been, because she'd left without a word before I was a year old.

Well, not without a word. There was a note my mom kept locked away, tear-stained and short. "Taking your advice," was all it said. I think my mom felt guilty for giving it.

Regardless, the picture stayed on the mantel, and Aunt Pris stayed wherever she had gone.

I hated her for it.

Geoff lost interest in the picture and Aunt Scilla after a while, even though _he_ had actually known her. _He_ could remember ATV rides and swimming lessons and bedtime stories. To him, Aunt Scilla was something he had left behind with his childhood toys, not a mystery mocking us from the mantel.

Geoff was named after Geoffrey Chaucer, and he wasn't the only one. The day he was born and the name decided Aunt Scilla had been out in the country choosing a dog from a shelter, and cell phone reception was scattered at best. She'd gotten halfway home before getting everyone's messages, and when she showed up at the hospital it was with the dog, Chaucer, in tow.

Dad said she and Mom had had quite the shouting match, right there in the delivery room, until a nurse made her take the dog back out.

The fight never really ended. Geoff stayed Geoff, and the dog stayed Chaucer, and no one said any more about it.

Now the dog was gone too, of course. Aunt Scilla hadn't bothered to say where she was going, but she'd remembered to take her dogs with her.

The summer after my senior year of high school, my mom was killed in a car accident.

Geoff flew in from his new job in Phoenix, and there was the usual business of the funeral and a lot of casseroles, which I don't remember very well, because there were a few weeks there that are nothing but hazy. I remember my father crying a lot, and trying not to cry even more often, and I remember Geoff hugging me, _for real_ , like an older brother, without any special occasion social obligation, and I remember it rained a lot.

Just as all the formalities were ending and we were starting to realize we had to continue on with our lives, Dad made the decision to move out of our house and into Aunt Scilla's.

The cabin Aunt Scilla had lived in was way out in the country, and we'd used it as a summer home for as long as I could remember. Now, Dad couldn't stand being in our own home, and with Geoff living at the other end of the country and me leaving for college in a couple of months, Dad felt he could make a move without too many consequences.

Why it had to be Aunt Scilla's house, I don't know. I'd never quite liked the place. It felt itchy, foreign, and there were too many trees around it. When we were kids, Geoff and I would drop our bags inside the front door and run off in the direction of the creek, and once we were out of sight of the building, I'd feel fine.

I never slept too well during our summer vacations.

After phoning his boss to inform him he'd be staying on a little longer to help with the move, Geoff confided to me privately that he didn't think a move out to isolation was the best decision for Dad.

I was eighteen and didn't know much about that, so I just shrugged.

"He needs help, people." Geoff rubbed at the back of his neck, something he'd never done before his adult job.

"I'm people," I answered.

Geoff smiled down at me fondly. "I know, but…How are you doing?"

"Don't patronize."

He sighed. "I'm not. Look, Rae, I'm worried about you both. I miss Mom terribly, but I know when I get back out to Phoenix, my life will start again, and I'll get caught up in it, and eventually everything will hurt a little less. Dad…I don't know. And you. You haven't even cried."

It was true. I hadn't. I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with me. It was just that it all felt a bit…

"Fuzzy," I told him. "Everything's fuzzy. I can't…"

He hugged me again, one-armed. "I know."

I changed the subject. "Jimmy and John are coming over tomorrow. They'll come to the cabin with us."

Geoff nodded, already thinking like a boss. "Good. We can spend the weekend getting the place set up. I'm sure there're some repairs that need to be done…Jon's coming too. You remember Jon?"

The hazy was coming on again, and I nodded dimly. A weekend at Aunt Scilla's place, maybe more...

John and Jimmy had been my best friends since kindergarten, just like Jon had been Geoff's. We'd gotten into all sorts of trouble together, everything from broken windows when we were eight to broken beer bottles just last year. Geoff had caught us with the beer, but the advantage to having someone like Geoff as an older brother was he never got ruffled, just gave some advice about chugging and promised not to tell Mom and Dad.

He also pointed out that if we were going to drink, we could do better than Keystone, which is how I learned about Guinness.

There was beer the day we moved into Aunt Scilla's house. Dad was too distracted to notice, and of course neither Geoff nor Jon were interested in controlling The Minors. We got the main rooms arranged by sundown. Jon sparked up the rusty old grill, and I made a bonfire. Burgers and beers firmly in hand, we settled in around the fire to wait out the quiet country night.

I waited until Dad had gone to bed, not really having eaten, before making my announcement.

"I'm going to community college."

Jimmy's second burger fell right out of his mouth. There was a brief moment of silence, followed by Jimmy swearing as he tried to brush ashes off his bun, and then Geoff was on me.

" _What?_ "

I had been accepted into a lovely private university in Pennsylvania, and all my previous plans had been about that. Dad and Mom had saved up plenty. I was covered through a master's degree, and there was no reason to consider community college.

Plus, I was smart, or at least that's what everyone told me, so the expectation was that I would do something impressive with my life.

"Dad needs me here," I said simply. When Geoff made to argue, I continued, "You know he does. He's not even eating. I don't want to come back on Christmas break and find out he's not here any more. I don't want-"

It was as close to tears as I'd gotten yet. Sensing the impending explosion, John moved to sling an arm over my shoulders.

"It's not a bad plan," he said, uncharacteristically soft. "Jimmy and I'll be there too."

I nodded, feeling my sinuses clog up.

"Yeah," said Jimmy. "We'll help you look after your dad. We can all study together."

"You study?" John asked.

"Yes. _You_ don't."

"Oh, right."

Jon was eyeing Geoff. "She's not wrong."

"I know, but…"

"And this way you don't have to stay yourself."

My mouth fell open, mimicking Jimmy's expression from earlier. "You were going to stay?"

He looked at me glumly. "I kinda felt I had to." He looked at the house. "This…isn't good." He turned back to stare me down. "Are you sure about this?"

I nodded. Then, "I don't want to be like Aunt Scilla. I don't want to walk out on my family."

Quietly, Geoff asked, "Rae, you don't feel like I've…"

" _No._ "

We went back to our beer. I felt, even as the night got darker and the bugs got louder, that the conversation wasn't over. We still had a whole day tomorrow. The sheds and the attic had to be cleaned. The wine cellar had to be gone through. The lawn had to be mowed. I wondered if this would be my life. Chores and bonfires. Friends and pretending to study. I wondered if I cared.

It was hard to care about anything, I realized, with my mother gone, my dad going, and Aunt Scilla's ghost presiding over all, as if we should have seen this coming.


	2. A Dangerous Business

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter 2: A Dangerous Business

 _Five years later…_

My call to Geoff was an urgent one, and as I listened to the dial tone I felt guilty, wondering when I'd come to rely so heavily on my absent elder brother.

It went to voicemail. "Geoff?" I said tentatively. "Geoff, it's Dad…He's…leaving. Says he's going on a trip. Says he's been cooped up in this house long enough, and now he's going to go do all the things he put off doing when we were growing up, and the house is mine, if I like it."

 _But I don't like it,_ I thought. _I hate it, and the only reason I stayed in it was because of you, and now you're_ leaving _._

"Geoff, I don't know what to do. Please call me."

I hung up feeling even closer to the floor than when I'd picked up the phone. I was a puddle, a mess to be cleaned up. How had I gotten this way? Mom had always raised us to be strong. I'd thought that was what I was doing. Being strong.

Some niggling part of me knew that wasn't true, that I'd also been afraid to leave.

I squared my shoulders and stormed out into the yard. No, no, no. I was a good daughter, a good sister. That was the real thing. The true thing. That was the reason I hadn't stayed.

I hadn't left Dad to rot in his grief.

The cabin was a beautiful place now. When Dad concentrated on anything, it was landscaping, and he'd turned Aunt Scilla's wild world into a back country paradise. The fields rolled in sunshine, just beyond the line of trees surrounding the house. The creek, swollen just now with early summer rains, visible, a blue ribbon cutting through a green swatch. Behind me was the American equivalent of an English garden, my own contribution to the transformation. It looked a mess at first glance, but each plant had been carefully selected and tended, then set to look like it had been dropped into place.

I'd come to love our home. The house occasionally still gave me the shivers, but I spent as little time in it as possible, even in winter. And even then, filled with all our furniture, it wasn't so bad.

I had a job now, which was a lovely and stabilizing thing in a fragile world, and with such small student loans, could probably pay my own way here. But I couldn't operate the larger landscaping machines, and though I had no doubt John'd be over every other week to help me, I knew I'd be lonely.

Without my dad to take care of, I had no idea what to do with myself.

There was John now, coming up the path with a lopsided grin I'd come to feel an odd affection for. It was a feeling I was just beginning to examine closely, and I liked what I was finding.

He stopped to stand beside me. "He really leaving?" he asked, nodded at Dad's figure, beyond the trees, hard at work on the lawn mower.

I nodded. "Apparently. I just left Geoff a voicemail. I hope he comes home."

John looked at me sharply. "Isn't it a good thing? I mean, that's the best he's looked in a long time."

He was right. Dad's color was better, his arms more filled out. He was taking care of himself, not just leaving it all on me. But I was selfish.

"What am I without someone to take care of?" I wondered aloud, then started, because I hadn't meant to say it.

John draped an easy arm around my shoulders. "Not too late to figure that out."

When had he become so wise?

Geoff didn't come. He called to say he couldn't get away from work just then, and that I'd better let Dad have his crisis. It was good for him.

Nothing I didn't already know. I didn't call him back.

Dad left at the beginning of July, leaving a notebook full of instructions on winterizing the property and promising he'd be home for Christmas. I think he called John before he left, because both he and Jimmy appeared on my doorstep that night, with beer and the suggestion that I get a dog.

That reminded me of Aunt Scilla, and I felt slightly sick.

It never took much for Jimmy and John to go under, or maybe it did, but it happened too fast for me to notice. I helped them stumble into what used to be my dad's bedroom, then made my way to my own room, cradling my head as I went.

It seemed to me that all the hurts of my lifetime were gathering in my forehead. I lay face down on my bed with them still throbbing and a familiar pressure on my eyelids.

John and Jimmy were still out cold when I woke the next morning. I pulled out half a pound of bacon to defrost and set the coffee pot, then went in search of something to allay the restlessness I'd woken with.

I found it in the attic, the one room we'd never gotten to in our mad rush to make the place hospitable for year-round human occupation. There were trunks and trunks of Aunt Scilla's things, and I'd decided sometime in the night that I wanted them gone if I was going to live there on my own.

I found books mostly. A few I'd never even heard of…Had Aunt Scilla really been such a scholar? No one had told me. A few I knew very well.

It was in an old copy of _The Hobbit_ that I found it, stuck in the bit where Bard saves Laketown. It was nothing more than an old handkerchief, but even an amateur like myself could tell the embroidery way done by hand, and the symbols weren't ones I could read. They did look awfully like the Norse runes Tolkien had mimicked, however. I picked it up, rubbed my thumb over it…

…And awoke in a field, _The Hobbit_ and the handkerchief still in my hand. Birds flew over my head. I could hear a moving body of water not far off. And someone was singing, somewhere out of sight...

 _Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling!_

 _Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling._

 _Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,_

 _Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,_

 _There my pretty lady is, River-woman's daughter,_

 _Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water._

 _Old_ _Tom Bombadil_ _water-lilies bringing_

 _Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing?_

 _Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o!_

 _Goldberry_ _, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!_

 _Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!_

 _Tom's in a hurry now. Evening will follow day._

 _Tom's going home again water-lilies bringing._

 _Hey! Come derry dol! Can you hear me singing?_


	3. By the Weeping Willow

"But I had forgotten Bombadil, if indeed this is still the same that walked the woods and hills long ago, and even then was older than the old. That was not then his name. Iarwain Ben-adar we called him, oldest and fatherless. But many another name he has since been given by other folk: Forn by the Dwarves, Orald by Northern Men, and other names beside. He is a strange creature..."

-J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_

Chapter 3: By the Weeping Willow

The house I found myself in might have been my own. It was set near a stream and a field and a forest, but my home was not so green, the rain was not so strong and clean, and no one ever sang unless they were in the shower.

I was rushed in by the short, colorful man who had found me just as it started to pour, and he came in behind me laughing and shaking droplets from his great brown beard.

Not having made it out of range of the spray, I ended up wet anyway.

The man and his wife – who was, to be perfectly frank, waaay out of his league – sat me down and fed me, and the food, if somewhat lighter than I was used to, was no less satisfying. It felt like eating out of the forest itself, like fresh air and downpours and thick, moist soil.

I had been so rushed by the strangeness of it, I didn't have time to think that accepting food from strangers I'd met in a field when moments before I had been standing in my attic was probably a bad idea. When the idea did come to me, halfway through a second helping of bread and butter, it was immediately followed by the notion that this must be a dream, in which case I could enjoy it, or a hallucination, in which case what else had floated up out of that book? I had _thought_ it was dust…

The man was fingering the book, and it wasn't until he said, "Old Tom be a-wondering…Where did you come by a thing like this? Its jacket is not hardy, and its lettering is strange, " that I made the connection.

"Old Tom," I breathed. "Old Tom Bombadil, who defeated the Willow."

Tom roared, the crinkles in his face multiplying and reddening, and Goldberry – for so my hallucinating brain identified her – smiled softly as she sat down beside me.

"Old Man Willow? He's a nasty one. Full of anger. Cold, old anger. The kind that gets in the roots and works its way up into the branches. Is he what's troubling you?"

"No…" I said. "What's troubling me is, you're not supposed to be real."

Immediately I realized this was a rude thing to say, and I opened my mouth wide to apologize, but Tom and Goldberry were laughing again.

 _It must be nice_ , I thought, _to be always that happy, to have nothing ever get to you._

"Aye," said Goldberry, "so the folk of Men believe us, dreams and legends, myths and tales. But we are flesh and sinew, alive as oak and ash."

"That's not quite what I meant," I said. "If you'll excuse my bluntness, I'm not really sure how I got here."

Tom rubbed his beard. "Where were you before you went a-wandering on my grasses?"

"In my aunt's attic."

"Hmm. Not the sort of place to begin journeys from."

"No. I opened that book…touched _that_ handkerchief…and then I was here."

Tom's eyes brightened as he looked at the cloth. "Magic."

"Excuse me?"

"Not the high spells of wizards," Goldberry supplied, "nor the earth spells of Elves."

"No indeed," said Tom. "No. This is the roaring spell of hearts. She loved very much, who made this handkerchief. She was not ready to let go of the person she gave it to."

I frowned. "My aunt? I don't think so. And I don't know that she ever embroidered anything."

"Then perhaps it was given to her."

I took the handkerchief again, studied it carefully. There was a thrill in me, a quiet place was waking up and recognizing something. "I…I can't read it," I said. "Can you?"

"Dwarf runes," said Tom. "They are runes of love and friendship and sorrow. _Travel well, dear heart, dear friend._ I do not think Dwarves made this."

There was an image in my mind of Grumpy with a needle and a hankie. No, I didn't think so either.

"Who would have given my aunt a handkerchief with Dwarf runes?" I wondered aloud. Could Aunt Scilla have been a Trekkie? One of those people who go to Renaissance fairs? I felt like someone would have told me, and the image didn't fit with the picture on the mantel. That woman had had a practical face and worn workshirt. Then again, she hadn't turned out to be all that practical, and who knew what Trekkies wore when they weren't Trekking?

"Not a Dwarf, I think," said Goldberry, "though perhaps they know something of it. Can you not ask your aunt?"

"No," I said, a little too sharply. "She's gone. She's been gone for years. No one can ask her anything."

"And no one knows where she has gone," said Goldberry. "Perhaps the Dwarves can tell you."

I looked up at her and blinked. This made sense. It made…well, bizarrely it made sense. Aunt Scilla had disappeared where no one could follow. She'd gone somewhere and hadn't said where…

I shook my head violently. _No._ No way. I wasn't in Middle Earth, and neither was my aunt. Of all the impossibilities, that was the most impossible. I was hallucinating. Or I'd fallen over. Or…

"You do not believe in magic," Tom said shrewdly. He folded my fingers around the handkerchief. "But magic doesn't need believing. Follow the runes to your answers. Over hill and mountain they will lead you, through forest and valley, but at the end, yes, at the end, you will find magic, and answers, and perhaps your aunt."


	4. The Ghosts Beneath the Hill

"Deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised."

J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Return of the King_

Chapter 4: The Ghosts Beneath the Hill

I left Tom and Goldberry the following morning carrying a pack of supplies and wrapped in a wool cloak. It made a nice compliment to my jeans and flannel shirt, but it kept out the fog.

"It will not hurt to go, whether or not you go believing," Tom counseled over breakfast. "Answers made be found in dreams as well as in earth, and you already know your way."

 _Rivendell_ , I thought, even as he was saying this. Of course I was going to Rivendell. I had not woken in my own bed anymore than I had gone to sleep in it, and dream or no, there was nothing I could do except play it out.

A psychologist had said as much to me, after my mother's death. "Do what you need to do to get through this. Trust your intuition. Often enough it will take you where you need to go."

I hadn't gone anywhere. I'd stayed home, and gradually I'd stopped checking in with the psychologist. As I wasn't showing any signs of extra personalities or developing a drug habit, he'd left me alone.

Now my… _intuition_ (I gritted my teeth as I thought the word) was taking me to Rivendell. Or at least this dream was. I would stop in Bree, maybe at Weathertop. Maybe I would fight a few Ringwraith along the way.

I laughed aloud, into the morning. The sun was just beginning to dispel the morning mist, and Tom Bombadil's house was long behind me. Truth be told, I wasn't as concerned as I could have been about whether this was a dream or not. I was enjoying the walk, enjoying the quiet. It had been so long since I'd had any quiet. Jimmy and John were over every other night, and I had new neighbors, and my old high school history professor, Mrs. Nicolini, had started popping her head in since my dad had gone. She seemed to think I needed looking after.

I had a habit of leaving empty beer bottles out, hoping to frighten her off with my wickedness.

The journey to Rivendell, as my scattered childhood memory of _The Lord of the Rings_ recalled it, was rather daunting. I had never traveled that far on foot before. The most I'd ever done was an all day hiking trip with Geoff, and Dad had met us at the other end to drive us back to our home and a bonfire. I didn't have any money – didn't even know what passed for money in Middle Earth, and I wasn't armed.

In fact, if I was honest, I was being extremely foolish.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Why had I expected Tom to think of things like money and knives? The man practically lived in a frog pond!

How was I going to make it through Middle Earth without a knife? I felt frantically along my pockets, sighed in relief when my fingers found the familiar bulge of my pocket knife. Okay, that was settled then. I wasn't entirely helpless.

I thought of the Ringwraith and realized I was.

I remembered this was a dream and wondered if I'd wake up when they killed me.

I thought – just for a moment – that this might be real, and if so, _when_ was I? I hadn't thought to ask Tom. Were there even Ringwraith to worry about?

While I was having these thoughts, the sun rose higher, but the fog thickened.

I'd spent more than enough of my life in the country to know this wasn't right, and as the mist gathered around me, it slid along my spine, and all the deeper parts of me were instantly convinced this was no dream.

I stiffened, slid my fingers in the pocket containing my knife. My fingers slipped along the cool metal, unable to get a grip in the damp. I didn't remember this part of the books well, but I remembered I wasn't the only thing in these small hills.

Then I heard it:

 _Cold be hand and heart and bone  
and cold be sleep under stone  
never more to wake on stony bed  
never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead  
In the black wind the stars shall die  
and still be gold here let them lie  
till the Dark Lord lifts his hand  
over dead sea and withered land._

I felt sick.

The pocket knife came out, and I turned slowly in a circle, wishing desperately for something to put my back against. Some of the fog was solidifying, or maybe shapes were appearing through it. I gripped my tiny knife harder, feeling my hold on it lessen as I did. I wasn't going to win this fight, not with anything from Switzerland.

Then, from the vestiges of my childhood sprung an old song I barely knew, and it slipped out from my lips before I knew what I was doing:

… _Courage see me through. Heart I trust in you, on this journey to the past_ _…_ *

When I told Geoff about it later, he laughed…a lot, but just then it wasn't so funny, because the nearly materializing being in front of me stopped, and its hesitation lasted just long enough for another song to cut through the fog:

 _Get out, you old wight! Vanish in the sunlight!_

 _Shrivel like the cold mist, like the winds go wailing,_

 _Out into the barren lands far beyond the mountains!_

 _Come never here again! Leave your barrow empty!_

 _Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness,_

 _Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended._

The wight shrieked, and I felt cold on my face. I shut my eyes against it, and when I opened them again, the wight was gone, and the fog was fading.

I looked at Tom. "Nice timing."

"I remembered you would not know the wights, might not know the danger. But you have a stout heart to face the world with…"

He turned from me as he spoke and vanished into a crack in the hill, his words echoing back after him. I waited, and when he reappeared he had a short sword with him.

"It is light enough for a maiden's hand," he explained, holding it out to me hilt first.

I accepted it gingerly. "I don't really know how to use this."

"You will learn, as you learned how to use your feet, as you learned how to use your wits. You will need all three to get you where you are going."

"And more besides," I muttered.

"And more besides. Now, make for Bree. Wear the sword where others can see it, and don't let on you are unused to it. Wear it like your cloak and courage."

"Thank you," I said.

"Farewell, Lady." Tom smiled. "I must away to Goldberry. May you meet no more evil on your journey, and find what you seek at its end."

 ***Additional Disclaimer** : This song is from _Anastasia_.


	5. Nursery Rhymes and Troubling Times

"There is an inn, a merry old inn  
beneath an old grey hill,  
And there they brew a beer so brown  
That the Man in the Moon himself came down  
one night to drink his fill."

-J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_

Chapter 5: Nursery Rhymes and Troubling Times

I made it to Bree just as the sun was setting and the rain starting, and made a pathetic enough figure at the gate that the keeper let me through and directed me to The Prancing Pony. I stood there, dripping on the welcome mat, wondering if the gold Tom had shoved at me would hold up under nosy small town scrutiny. It was all I had, in any case, and would have to do. I wasn't going to spend the night on the street.

The innkeeper found me there after a minute or so. Butterbur, I seemed to remember his name was. Barliman was the name he gave me, before offering me food and ale and asking with a cough if I could pay.

Cautiously, I showed him the gold, wishing I knew how to count it.

Barliman looked at me pityingly and showed me to a table in a corner. A moment later, he had slipped a mug into my hand and vanished into the crowd. I was left to wonder how such a kind creature had survived in business this long.

He checked up on me several times, and I went through a couple of beers before finally ordering whatever he recommended. When he came back with bread, cheese, vegetables, and a fish fry that outdid any I had ever had, I explained that I would need a room.

He had one left.

I felt a prickling along my spine, like the wight's fingers from earlier that morning. One room left…a busy night at the inn in Bree…I clutched my forehead, trying to remember. I had loved _The Lord of the Rings_ as a kid, why had I gone so long without reading it?

The answer to _that_ was a simple one: I'd gone a long while without _reading_. Beer, bonfires, best friends, they were my leisure now. I hadn't read anything not assigned by a teacher for a good five years, and I was surprised to realize I missed it.

Wrapped up in sobering thoughts about my own life, I didn't notice them come in at first. I was taking a sip of my ale – a long one – and nearly spat it back out when I saw them over the edge of my mug. Four hobbits, looking worse for the wear, and the center of attention in a room full of traveling folk.

Hobbits didn't travel. This was the first fact to solidify itself solidly in my mind. Hobbits liked their homes and their gardens. Hobbits were, in fact, a lot like me. And four hobbits traveling out of the Shire had only happened once, in my recollection…

As the crowd became more absorbed in their stories, one of the hobbits, with darker hair than the rest and astonishing blue eyes, slipped away from the others to join a crusty looking man at a table in the corner.

My heart sank into my sneakers, and I took another gulp of ale. I _remembered_ this. I remembered…

Remembered Pippin was about to give something away. In the corner, Frodo was looking alarmed, and Strider was watching the situation intensely, but neither were moving. Neither were singing…

As I jumped up onto my own table, feeling my face redden and my courage lesson, it was Aunt Scilla's voice, drawn from the depths of a childhood I couldn't remember, that I heard. The tune hadn't been in the books I'd read, but I knew it as certainly as I knew the scars on my knees and the ache in my heart. Aunt Scilla had sung this song to me when I was a baby.

Aunt Scilla had _known_ this song.

 _There is an inn, a merry old inn  
beneath an old grey hill,  
And there they brew a beer so brown  
That the Man in the Moon himself came down  
one night to drink his fill._

 _The ostler has a tipsy cat_  
 _that plays a five-stringed fiddle;_  
 _And up and down he runs his bow,_  
 _Now squeaking high, now purring low,_  
 _now sawing in the middle._

 _The landlord keeps a little dog_  
 _that is mighty fond of jokes;_  
 _When there's good cheer among the guests,_  
 _He cocks an ear at all the jests_  
 _and laughs until he chokes._

 _They also keep a hornéd cow_  
 _as proud as any queen;_  
 _But music turns her head like ale,_  
 _And makes her wave her tufted tail_  
 _and dance upon the green._

 _And O! the rows of silver dishes_  
 _and the store of silver spoons!_  
 _For Sunday there's a special pair,_  
 _And these they polish up with care_  
 _on Saturday afternoons._

 _The Man in the Moon was drinking deep,_  
 _and the cat began to wail;_  
 _A dish and a spoon on the table danced,_  
 _The cow in the garden madly pranced,_  
 _and the little dog chased his tail._

 _The Man in the Moon took another mug,_  
 _and rolled beneath his chair;_  
 _And there he dozed and dreamed of ale,_  
 _Till in the sky the stars were pale,_  
 _and dawn was in the air._

 _Then the ostler said to his tipsy cat:_  
 _"The white horses of the Moon,_  
 _They neigh and champ their silver bits;_  
 _But their master's been and drowned his wits,_  
 _and the Sun'll be rising soon!"_

 _So the cat on his fiddle played hey-diddle-diddle,_  
 _a jig that would wake the dead:_  
 _He squeaked and sawed and quickened the tune,_  
 _While the landlord shook the Man in the Moon:_  
 _"It's after three!" he said._

 _They rolled the Man slowly up the hill_  
 _and bundled him into the Moon,_  
 _While his horses galloped up in rear,_  
 _And the cow came capering like a deer,_  
 _and a dish ran up with the spoon._

 _Now quicker the fiddle went deedle-dum-diddle;_  
 _the dog began to roar,_  
 _The cow and the horses stood on their heads;_  
 _The guests all bounded from their beds_  
 _and danced upon the floor._

 _With a ping and a pang the fiddle-strings broke!_  
 _the cow jumped over the Moon,_  
 _And the little dog laughed to see such fun,_  
 _And the Saturday dish went off at a run_  
 _with the silver Sunday spoon._

 _The round Moon rolled behind the hill,_  
 _as the Sun raised up her head._  
 _She hardly believed her fiery eyes;_  
 _For though it was day, to her suprise_  
 _they all went back to bed._

"Sorry," I said when I'd finished, looking at Frodo. "A song out of the Shire, right? I heard it when I was a child."

"Ye-yes," he stammered. "But you haven't got the tune quite right."

"Then show us how it's really done, Mr. Underhill!" shouted one of the other guests. An ale was shoved at Frodo, and another at myself, and Frodo stood up on his own table to begin Bilbo's rendition of the song.

I sat down with a sigh and a heavy heart, knowing the danger hadn't passed. A little encouragement was all Frodo needed. In the spirit of the room and the drink he'd just had, he acted out the song, with little leaps and bounds and a final crash into the middle of the guests – and into oblivion.

I met Strider's piercing gaze after it happened, just to make sure we were on the same page, and after Frodo's awkward recovery, I followed them to their rooms. Taking my cue from Strider, I shut the door and waited, my back against it, for the hobbits to notice us. They did, with a little start from Pippin and a suspicious glare from the sandy-haired one I guessed must be Sam.

I shall not go over all they said that night, as everyone already knows it. I think there were bits missing, but I can't be sure. I was in shock, and the door behind me was the only thing supporting me, until Merry came bursting through, followed by another hobbit, and I was shoved further into the shadows.

They had sorted out their travel plans and sleeping arrangements, as well as the sleeping arrangements for the dummies, before anyone noticed me.

Nob shut the door behind him, and Strider, who had been staring me down for several minutes, spoke:

"Now, who are you? And what are we to do with you?"

I attempted, foolishly, to shrink further into the wall behind me. "I…My name is Raelyn, and…and I'm also traveling to Rivendell."

"Hmph," said Sam. "You've been awfully quiet there, minding your own business this whole time. Coming along to spy, are you?"

"Don't be ridiculous," I said. "I…okay, I can see how this looks suspicious, but I really am traveling to Rivendell…on business of my own! Though I…though I admit I do know about yours." I looked at Frodo.

"And you expect us just to take you with us?" he demanded. "How did you know Bilbo's song?"

"I heard it as a child."

"Yes, you said that, but I can't remember him ever singing it for the Big Folk."

"But she's not one of your Big Folk," Strider said shrewdly. "Not the ones you are familiar with, at any rate. Come into the light, Lady."

I did as I was told, wondering if I should tell them everything or if I should just wake up. How _could_ I wake up? Throw myself on the fire?

Strider was speaking again. "Where are you from?"

"I…I don't think you would know the place."

"Hmm. Why are you journeying to Rivendell?"

"I'm hoping I might find some answers there."

"Answers to what?"

"How I got here, and what happened to my aunt."

"Your aunt?" Pippin asked. "Was she an Elf?"

"No," said Strider quietly, "she was Queen Scilla of Dale, wife of King Bard, Seer of Rivendell, Heroine of the Battle of Five Armies, and long time friend and correspondent of Frodo's cousin, Bilbo."

I don't know who was more shocked, Frodo, the other hobbits, or me. I gaped at Strider, feeling a sting in my eyes as the rest of my face seemed to melt and crumble.

"You knew my aunt?" My voice cracked around the question.

"Yes, though not as well as some."

"She was…she was…"

Strider thoughtfully pulled a chair in front of the fire and guided me into it. "What do you know?" he asked when I was seated.

"Nothing," I admitted. "She disappeared when I was only a year old. I was going through her things...and then I was here. Bombadil said I should go to Rivendell. I didn't…I didn't know you would be journeying at the same time."

"But you knew we would be traveling there. You have your aunt's Sight?"

"I...It's a little more complicated than that."

"I remember your aunt," Frodo said, coming to stand by me. "She came to Bag End once, with Gandalf, and she and Bilbo spent hours locked away together, writing a history, he told me."

"She…she was a queen?" I tried grasping what Strider had said, but I couldn't. My aunt, my absent aunt…a queen? What had she left for? A fairy tale?

"She married King Bard upon her return to Middle Earth," Strider continued, "but she also spent much of her time writing and working with Mr. Baggins. She was a great friend to Gandalf and the Elves."

The rest of this was too ludicrous to grasp, so I asked, " _'Was'?_ "

"I'm afraid she has been dead for many years."

I hadn't though it possible to grieve for someone you've never known, but I felt like someone had thrown a brick into my chest. I clutched at myself, knowing as I did that it wasn't my aunt that I grieved for, but the loss of the last connection to my mother. The mystery was solved, but it could do my shattered family no good.

"We never knew where she went," I said aloud, knowing, as I did, that I truly was in Middle Earth. That Aunt Scilla had left us to live in a fairy story, to marry a king, to make friends with Elves.

What was it my mother had said? That something had happened before she left? Had she been to Middle Earth already? Did she just _have_ to go back?

"I think I still need to go to Rivendell," I told Strider.

"Yes," he said. "I think that wise. Come with us, lend us your Sight along the road, and perhaps we will not go astray."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that, if you are indeed Scilla's kin, I take your coming to be a good omen."


	6. Answers in the Dark

"Voiceless it cries,  
Wingless flutters,  
Toothless bites,  
Mouthless mutters."

J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Hobbit_

Chapter 6: Answers in the Dark

"Psst! Frodo!" I hissed.

It was our second night out from Bree, and as I had a vague memory of mosquitoes to come and a clear memory of not liking mosquitoes, I had decided to stop postponing this conversation.

The hobbit rolled in my direction without opening his eyes. "Yes, Lady Raelyn?"

"Rae," I corrected.

"'Rosie Rae,' your aunt called you."

That. It was that sort of thing I hated. That sort of thing that made me angry. A woman who had never known me, using a pet name? Of course, everyone had called me "Rosie Rae" - a play on my middle name, Rose - until I was about twelve, and then seemed to think I would think it undignified if they didn't stop soon. It had petered off after that, though Geoff still liked to call me it when he was feeling especially older-brotherly.

"Will you tell me about her?" I asked aloud. My anger could not quite stifle my curiosity, I was finding. An aunt who had left us for Middle Earth was more interesting than an aunt who had merely left us.

I was assuming, at this point, that I wasn't dreaming, or rather, I had stopped assuming I _was_ dreaming and had agreed with myself not to think about it. It's possible I had made the decision after the Barrow Wights, but I wasn't thinking about _that_ either.

Frodo rolled over on his stomach. Our bedrolls were close enough that at this angle we could gossip like girlfriends at a slumber party. Not that I had a lot of girlfriends. And Jimmy and John didn't gossip.

"She was…different. Certain of what she was doing. While Bilbo was always running around spinning one scheme or another, Lady Scilla was focused. She was calm and confident, but not cold. I was very young, but I always remember she…she looked at me with pity. Now I think she must have known. Did she know? Do _you_ know?"

"Yes, I know," I whispered, thinking I was being extremely selfish, grilling the hobbit about my aunt while he was carrying the One Ring. "And she knew. I wonder…I wonder if that's why she came back."

Frodo frowned. I could see the outline of it, the edges of his lips tipping in the moonlight. "I don't think so. Strider could tell you more than I, but I believe she stayed because she fell in love."

My jaw dropped. Aragorn had said she was a queen…someone's wife…but I hadn't imagined…

"My aunt stayed because of a _fling_?"

Frodo's frown deepened. "I don't think so. Not the way Bilbo tells it. He said they'd all hoped she'd stay, but she'd gone home anyway. Gandalf watched her and eventually went to your world to bring her back. Apparently she was very unhappy. She fell in love with Bard in Laketown."

"Bard the Bowman?" I asked, shocked. "The guy that killed the dragon?"

"Yes, although your aunt was there too."

"She was?"

And Frodo told me the whole story. How my Aunt Pris, his Lady Scilla, had bargained with the Elven King for her freedom and ridden to warn Laketown. How she'd freed Bard from prison and, with his son's help, brought him the Black Arrow that could slay Smaug. How she'd fought orcs and Smaug on the rooftops of Laketown, and again in the Battle of Five Armies.

Somehow in all that she'd fallen for the man Tolkien's novels only ever described as "grim." How could a woman so reckless fall for a man so pessimistic? How could he fall for _her_?

"She and Bard reigned in Dale for many years, and maintained a friendship with King Dain Ironfoot, in part because of your aunt's travels with Thorin. I've only ever heard her name spoken with respect."

I rolled over on my back to stare up at the stars.

"She went back for you," I heard Frodo say. I tilted my head to look at him upside down. "Even though it broke her heart. She left because she believed it was wrong to stay when she had a family at home."

"She was right," I said, shifting again.

"Maybe," said Frodo, "but from what she told Bilbo, I think your mother told her to go."

I knew this. I didn't want to know it.

"And," Frodo continued, "I think Bilbo understood. He was never quite content in the Shire, after. Adventures, they seem to change a person."

We made it through the Midgewater and on to Weathertop. My memory of _The Lord of the Rings_ was not so fuzzy as to have forgotten this part, and I spent our campout twitching, which is not like me, in the wilderness or the dark.

Strider was out of sight when they came, and my hobbit companions were distracted by their dinner preparations. This was not quite right, I could tell, and yet, the horror that came awakened my memory perfectly.

I drew the short sword Tom had given me, putting my butt to the hobbits' backs. It wasn't as heavy as I had expected. Then again, I was no desk jockey. My palms and my arms were hardened by outdoor work. I could wield a sword, if I only knew how to swing it.

"You will learn," Tom had told me, but this wasn't that moment. The Ringwraiths were on us, and we were flung aside. They went straight for Frodo, who had disappeared.

Strider was back – Aragorn, I should say. The man fighting in the wild was nothing like that man frightening Butterbur in his own pub. He had a log lit on fire and was swinging it at the Ringwraiths. They may have been immune to our swords, but fire seemed to give them pause.

Frodo? Where was Frodo?

I crawled out of the heap that was Merry, Pippin, and Sam just as he screamed, and then Aragorn was on them, and they fled.

"Poison," I said, as he retrieved the hilt of the dagger.

"Yes," he agreed. "This is beyond my skill to heal. He needs Elvish medicine."

We were far along the road before he said to me, "You knew. Like your aunt, you knew."


	7. The River

"He often used to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary."

J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_

Chapter 7: The River

Yes, I had known. I sat now, Frodo's head pillowed in my lap, wiping his brow with a cool cloth. It did no good. I could know, but it would do no good.

At least I knew he would survive. My memory of the beloved childhood tale hadn't faded that much.

Over our heads loomed the figures of "three monstrous trolls," glaring down as if they could have their stony revenge, not on the wizard who had tricked them to their doom, but at least on his weak and weary friends. Their presence cleared my head, brought back the memories, the things I had forgotten over the years. I remembered…

What did I remember? I remembered that everyone had died at the end of _The Hobbit_. There had been a dragon and a Ring – the same Ring that was resting just over the weakening heart of the hobbit in my arms – and a battle with a lot of different sides and a lot more casualties.

As I remembered I had to consider…was this what it had been like for my aunt? _The Hobbit_ had had a gloomier ending than _The Lord of the Rings_ , though it was the children's story. Except it wasn't. It was the foreshadowing, the hint that things weren't quite right in the world, and wouldn't be right until they were changed for good.

Maybe my aunt's departure had been the foreshadowing that things weren't quite right in my world. Then again, maybe they would have been if she hadn't left.

Beside me, Sam was muttering and kissing Frodo's hand intermittently. Aragorn got him to his feet with the good sense to send him looking for kingsfoil, which was _not_ , as the hobbit assumed, a weed. I remembered that it was much, much more than a weed. At least if Aragorn was the one using it.

Before setting off on his own quest for the elusive plant, Aragorn knelt beside me to check on Frodo.

I opened my mouth, stopped when I saw the look on his face.

"Do not tell me," he said. "It was your aunt's province to ensure the quest of Thorin Oakshield never strayed off course. She never told anyone the future. It would be wrong for you to do so now."

"How awful," I said before I could stop myself.

Aragorn squeezed my shoulder. "Will you stay with him? Ensure he gets where he is meant to?"

Where he is meant to…I thought ahead. Rivendell? Or Mount Doom? Aragorn had no idea what he was asking me, and by his own instructions, I couldn't tell him. What a ridiculous thing to ask someone! I barely knew the hobbit. And yet…

And yet, as I looked down at Frodo's pale face I recognized something. An echo of my own pain, perhaps, with two parents gone and an uncle who loved the wider world more than home. He'd been left a house. I'd been left a house. We both preferred the quiet to all this adventure. Or did we?

I was answering Aragorn before I knew I had decided to, "I will stay with him. Until…until the end."

He met my eyes, then went off in search of Sam and the kingsfoil.

When they returned, they were not alone. A woman was with them, a…goddess, I thought. I'd never seen anyone that beautiful, even in the magazines my brother had kept hidden under his bed.

My instinct as they approached was to retreat, to let the larger and grander folk do their thing. My promise stopped me, and I continued to cradle Frodo as the woman bent over him.

Their conference was quick, and they were lifting Frodo onto the white horse the woman had brought with her. "We must take him to my father."

Arwen then. This was Arwen. No wonder she was so beautiful. I stared up at the Elf woman in awe, until I realized I was being left behind.

"Wait!" I said sharply. They stared down at me. "I…No," I said to Arwen. "Go. We will catch up." I looked at Aragorn again, hoping he understood that my promise was not so easily broken.

He grasped Arwen's hand, and they were off with the shudder of horse hooves and a whisper of Elvish.

"We should break camp," Aragorn said, and we set to work.

Our progress behind Arwen and Frodo felt sluggish. A new urgency was in my feet, a _need_ to get to Rivendell and know that we had gotten them there safely. Sometime between Weathertop and the trolls I had lost sight of my original concern: how I had gotten to Middle Earth and how I would get home. That wasn't happening for a long while anyway, so I was free to spend all my worry on the hobbit. Maybe I could send my brother a message. My dad certainly wouldn't be around to get it.

I was surprised at the bitterness in my own thoughts. After all, I hadn't put up a fight about staying home, going to community college, and not going out to conquer the world. I'd never _wanted_ to conquer the world. I'd always just assumed my life would add up to more than it had. What was I complaining about? What was missing?

These were the selfish thoughts that plagued me as we crossed the last few leagues to Rivendell. When we got there, we found a swollen river, devastated banks, and a large company guarding the other side. How we were going to get across, I had no idea.

Someone – an Elf, I supposed, shouted at us. Aragorn returned the greeting, and there seemed to be a sort of conference on the other side. A boat appeared, far too flimsy looking for the roaring tide in front of us, but it made it across without a problem, and the hobbits, the Ranger, and I, were all hauled aboard.

Once across, there was a flurry of conversation, most of which I couldn't make out. I looked down at the hobbits and shrugged. They looked even more bewildered than I felt.

"Where's Frodo?" demanded Merry.

"He has been taken to Lord Elrond," answered one of the Elves. "He will be taken care of, but his condition is grave. If you will follow us, we will find you food and clean clothes and bring you to him."

Even distressed hobbits cannot resist the promise of a hot meal, and we followed him without argument, Aragorn just behind us. I felt slightly better knowing he was there, even though I was sure he had other things he needed to attend to. The Elf led us through the trees, up a path, and eventually down into the valley.

I stopped on the edge, forgetting everything. The sight before me drove it all away.

A high, lilting voice at my shoulder spoke. "Welcome to Rivendell, fair lady."

"I'm not a lady," I squeaked. "And I'll never call anything 'fair' again."

They laughed, and I shook myself out of my stupor, and once more we were moving down the path to The Last Homely House. My own cabin suddenly felt cold and uninviting.

We were passing through a back corridor that seemed to have a great amount of activity than any others – I guess this was near where they had taken Frodo – when Pippin suddenly shouted and burst ahead of us. We followed at an increased speed and ended on a small porch, where sat a very old hobbit and a figure that could only have been Gandalf.

"Mr. Bilbo!" Sam cried. The wizard rose, raised his bushy eyebrows at me, but before anyone else could speak, there was another cry, off to the left.

"Rae!"

I whirled and was swept up into my brother's arms.


	8. Reunions

"You can trust us to stick to you, through thick and thin – to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours – closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends."

-J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_

Chapter 8: Reunions

My face was crushed so deeply into my brother's shoulder, I didn't realize I was crying until he pulled away.

"How did you get here?" I sniffled.

"We tried to follow you," he said, thumbs rubbing my chin. His own eyes, I saw, were damp. "When we got here and were trying to figure it all out, Lord Elrond theorized we'd simply ended up in a different place. He's been trying to contact Lady Galadriel to see if there was a way of tracking you, but there are a lot of other things going on, as you know. We had no idea you were with Frodo! What happened? Where did you come out? Rae…" He bit his lip. "Aunt Pris was here."

"I know," I mumbled. "I came out near the Barrow Downs, where Tom…Wait. 'We'?"

The next moment, I was attacked. I knew enough of my friends' builds to recognize John and Jimmy, even before they let me come up for air.

"All of you?" I squealed.

"And more." Behind them, Geoff's friend Jon appeared, and behind him…

" _Mrs. Nicolini?_ "

"That's right. What were you thinking, running off on your own without so much as a note to your friends? You might have been snatched, for all we knew!"

She was a tiny woman, though I'm sure the hobbits still thought of her as enormous. Short, curly hair flew around her head, and her nose extended far enough away from her face, a bird could have landed on it. She'd been a friend of my family since calling my parents in for a parent-teacher conference to talk about my anger management issues, which my parents told her I didn't have. "That's the problem," she told them. "She manages it too well. But it's still there, boiling beneath the surface. Sooner or later, it'll boil over." The last thing I'd needed in my life was an overbearing Italian haunting my every step, but my mom had taken to her. Maybe she'd had some anger management issues of her own. Anyway, she'd been more than a teacher after that, and even with my mom gone, I hadn't been able to shake her.

"I didn't 'rush off'," I snapped. "And I wasn't _snatched_. One moment I was cleaning out the attic waiting for these lowlifes" – I jerked my thumb at Jimmy and John, and they both snorted – "to wake up so I could make them breakfast. The next I was in a field and Tom Bombadil was singing at me. And how is this any of your business anyway?"

She somehow managed to glare down her long nose and up at me, and, road-weary as I was, I took a step back.

"Perhaps we had better focus on the whys of the situation, rather than the hows," said a deep voice, and I turned to stare up at Gandalf. "You are not the first visitors from your time to come to us here in Middle Earth."

"Aunt Pris," Geoff and I said in unison.

"Lady Scilla," said a voice by my hip. I looked down. Bilbo Baggins, Ring-Finder, and, by all accounts, close friend of my long-lost aunt.

"Yes," I said softly, the words puffing out over my lips like smoke. My stomach twisted, a hunger I knew, but didn't understand, and Geoff shifted closer to me.

"Perhaps we should let you rest first, refresh yourselves," Gandalf said. "Frodo is in excellent hands for the time being. When you are clean and fed, Bilbo and I will answer your questions."

The Elves fell in around us, and my hobbit companions and I were led away. I looked down at them as we went.

"Will he really be okay, Lady Rose?" Sam asked.

"Yes, Sam," I said. "I would not have let him go if he would not have been."

"She was a good friend," Bilbo began. Our friends had retreated to the other end of the room, leaving us with the hobbit and the wizard. I was clean and dressed in a gown the Elves had told me my aunt had worn. There was a plate of food on my lap, but I'd hardly touched it. I couldn't stop looking at the hobbit in front me.

Beside me, my brother's attention was equally rapt. I was surprised to see a hunger there, and realized that while I missed an idea, my brother missed a _person_ , in a way he had never bothered to communicate to me. Perhaps his natural stoicism demanded it. Perhaps he didn't want to further inflame my irrational anger.

Regardless of my feelings about my aunt, as Bilbo talked, I couldn't help but be fascinated by her.

"An understanding friend, though she had her own burdens. She was clever, brave in her own way, and absolutely determined not to fail in her quest."

"What quest was that?" Geoff asked.

"To ensure the fate of Middle Earth played out the way it was meant to," Gandalf explained. "There were…differences. She was never quite clear, but without her guidance, there were one or two moments in the adventures of Thorin Oakenshield when all might have been lost."

"Not the least of which was when Smaug attacked Laketown," Bilbo added.

"I thought Bard the Bowman killed Smaug?" Geoff asked.

"He did," Bilbo answered. "But Bard was in prison when the dragon attacked, and would have died there if Scilla had not arrived to rally the Lakemen and free Bard. Of course, his son Bain had a part or two to play in that story."

"Scilla rescued Bard, bringing with her the Black Arrow," Gandalf went on. "Together they battled Smaug and a number of Orcs on the rooftops, before Bard killed Smaug, and they both dove into the lake to escape the fire."

"Afterwards, she helped him organize the survivors," said Bilbo. "And fought in the Battle of Five Armies. Even after that, while we waited for the Lady Galadriel to arrive to send your aunt home, she was always helping Bard, so you can see where this is going."

Geoff nodded. "He relied on her."

"It was more than that," Gandalf snuffed. "I watched your aunt very carefully after her return to her home. She was never very happy after. Finally I went to fetch her. If you want to blame someone for her disappearance, you can blame me."

"She and Bard ruled long and well together," Bilbo said. "And she and I kept in close correspondence, as much as is possible over so many long leagues of the world. And she had her own book, the one Gandalf had her write, which is here, is it not, old friend?"

"It is," Gandalf admitted. "You may see it if you like. The History of Middle Earth, which she aptly called-"

" _The Silmarillion_ ," Geoff breathed. "I've read it."

Gandalf's eyebrows knitted together. "If I understand clearly all that your aunt has told me, I believe what you have read is a version of it, translated down many generations. And there may be some pieces missing, because we do not yet know them."

Geoff nodded. "That makes sense."

"I have a question," I said. "Barely more than twenty years have passed for us. Why is it more than sixty for you?"

"Do you think time should pass at the same pace in both worlds?" Gandalf demanded. "There is no reason to suppose our lives would flow together. I believed Lady Scilla came when she did because she was _needed_. I believe the same of you."

"Needed?" Geoff gaped. "What could you need us for?"

"The same reason we needed Lady Scilla of course. To ensure the fate of the Ring does not go astray."

"Missing bits…" I mused.

"What was that?" Geoff asked.

I twisted to look up at him. "There were things missing. Frodo never met Bombadil, for one. I did that. And at the ford…it wasn't that Elf, what's his name? Glory-something."

"Glorfindel?" Gandalf supplied.

"Yes, I think so. It was Arwen who came. I don't…I think things still aren't quite right."

Gandalf rubbed at his beard. "You may be correct. I will ponder this and bring it to Lord Elrond's attention, once he has finished with Frodo."

Frodo…

"Also, I said, gulping, "I promised Aragorn I would stay with Frodo, till…till the end, I told him."

Geoff's face hardened, but he couldn't say anything, not here, not with Gandalf and Bilbo looking on. Not until Frodo volunteered to take the Ring, at any rate. But I could tell we were going to fight about it later.

"Then come, my dear," said Bilbo, rising. "Let us not leave him alone any longer."

I glanced back at my brother, my friends, as I walked away. Geoff would tell me later that I was being stupid, that I needed to go home, right now, or as soon as it could be arranged. But I couldn't help feeling that Gandalf was right, that we belonged here now, that we had things to do.

If this was how my aunt had felt, I was beginning to understand why she hadn't stayed away.


	9. Bedside Manners

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."  
― J.R.R. Tolkien, _The Fellowship of the Ring_

Chapter 9: Bedside Manners

I wasn't there when Frodo woke.

It was morning, and I slept blissfully in my room, my addled brain giving in after the last shard of the Morgol blade had been extracted. I didn't emerge until past one, and by then Frodo slept again. I couldn't begrudge him the opportunity. Lord knew we wouldn't get much rest after this.

But I was restless, so I washed my face and dressed and made my way through the strangely empty halls of Rivendell to a quiet porch, and, as weariness took over again, I found a seat.

The breeze was a cool one. Summer had turned to fall, but I found that comforting. Cider days. Pumpkin days. Time to dress up and pretend to be people we're not.

Back home I'd be pulling the last of the garden up, bedding down what was left. dad would be scouring the fields for any potatoes the farmers had missed, any apples. There'd be a hay bale we had no use for, and I'd check the cracks in the barn, because of course he'd forgotten.

 _Dad is gone_ , I reminded myself. _It's just me now._

When had my life gotten so lonely?

I didn't hear a step, just noticed a change in the air. It got stiller somehow, greener, like the forest closing in, though before me were waterfalls and sunshine.

"Forgive me," said a voice, soft and rough, as I stood and turned.

A man stood before me – an Elf. He was cleaner than he should have been, for there was an air of travel about him, a quality I recognized but could not put my finger to. His hair was long and blonde, and his face young even by Elven standards. His eyes held shadows, but not as many as some I'd seen. Elrond's, for one.

Those eyes, as they stared at me, widened almost imperceptibly.

"My lady?"

"Raelyn," I said, with as good a courtesy as I could make.

"Yes, but…"

"You might have known my aunt."

"Queen Scilla of Dale," said the Elf. "Yes, I knew her. If you are her niece, then...you are not from Middle Earth."

'''Fraid not," I snorted. "Got here by accident, just like my aunt…" I hesitated, winding my fingers together. "Did you know her well?"

The Elf came further into the room, waved a hand at the bench I'd been sitting on.

"Please," I said, sitting back down and making room.

He took a seat. "Forgive me. I have not introduced myself. My name is Legolas."

"Prince of Mirkwood?"

He winced, almost imperceptibly. "I am. I know your aunt because we fought in the Battle of Five Armies together, and because she was a…guest of my father's for a short while. Tell me, how did you come to be here?"

I shrugged. "No idea. I'll leave that mystery to Gandalf and Elrond. I've got bigger problems."

His eyebrows lowered, his eyes focused. I had rarely felt such scrutiny. "What problems are those?"

I sighed, looked down at my hands. "How to tell my friends I'm staying until this is done."

"I see." Legolas looked away, his gaze now on the water before us. "Then it is as we have suspected. These are troubling times."

There was no denying it. I nodded.

He looked at me again. "Will you be guiding us then, as you aunt did?"

"I don't know about that, but I know I'll be here."

He smiled then, softly, almost, not quite a smile. The smile of someone who has few things to smile about. "I am glad to hear it. Your coming is a small omen, perhaps, but a good one."

I blushed. "You people have an extraordinary amount of faith in me and my friends."

Legolas considered this. "We have learned to accept help when it comes. That it comes unsought for seems to be a sign that we are not entirely alone in our struggles."

My turn to do some considering. I'd been whisked away to Middle Earth, presumably by a book and a handkerchief. But how had my friends gotten here? And why? A moment before I'd been bemoaning my loneliness, but they had crossed _centuries_ to come after me.

I stood up, waved Legolas down before he could follow. "Thank you. I…have something to do."

His voice floated after me as I left, "Yes…of course."

I found Jimmy and John in the hallway outside Frodo's rooms. Jimmy was leaning against the wall, frowning down at John where he sat on the floor, throwing a stone at the far wall and catching it as it bounced back.

"Hey," I said softly.

John stood up, brushing himself off, and both boys surveyed me carefully.

"Quite a mess you've got us in," Jimmy said finally.

"Yes, well…" I shifted my feet uncomfortably. "Maybe they can send you home now, so you don't have to be in the middle of it."

"Don't be ridiculous," Jimmy said, at the same time John said, " _Hell_ no."

"I think we're going to throw a Ring into a mountain," John added.

"Shh!" I hissed at him. "They don't know that yet! By the way…how well do you remember the books?"

John opened and closed his mouth, then shrugged. "I read them in…Actually, no. My mom read them to me and my sister."

"I read them again last summer," Jimmy said. "You're right. Things are a little different." He looked at John. "And you've never read a book in your life."

John grinned. "Pretty sure I read Dr. Seuss."

"I'm pretty sure you looked at the pictures. That doesn't count."

"Sure it does. 'See. Spot. Run.' I _saw_ Spot run. Therefore, I read it."

Jimmy had opened his mouth to retort, but I was already laughing. I laughed loudly and shamelessly. It'd been so long since I'd laughed.

"Thank you," I said to their astonished, simple faces. "I don't know what I'd have done without you all these years. I need to get back to Frodo now. If you see my brother, would you tell him where I am? We'll worry about rings and mountains and John's illiteracy after I've talked to him."

They muttered something after me, but I'd already turned, knowing they'd be embarrassed.


End file.
